Homewood Museum hosts journalist and author Scott Shane to discuss his new nonfiction book about a very local story of both tragedy and triumph. Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland unearths the lost story of Thomas Smallwood, who was born into slavery in Maryland, bought his freedom, educated himself, and became a shoemaker in Southwest Washington, a short walk from the U.S. Capitol.

Smallwood then began to organize mass escapes from slavery with the help of a young white partner, Charles Torrey—and wrote about the escapes in satirical dispatches for an abolitionist newspaper. It was Smallwood, Shane discovered, who gave the underground railroad its name. But Smallwood's daring operation took place against the very dark background of the domestic slave trade, which thrived on Washington's mall and at Baltimore's Inner Harbor and became an engine driving the underground railroad.